It's in the news today, but it was actually on TV Reload the podcast last week that might.
Welcome back guys to TV Reload. As you may know, my name is Benjamin Norris and this is your podcast to get all the inside goss on the popular TV shows you may be watching from around the world. Undeniably, our TV sets are a major part of our home entertainment, and yet very little is known about how our favorite
shows get made. So each episode have been finding guests they want to dive just that little bit deeper into the shows they're currently making, so that you can hear all their exclusive stories and gain access to the biggest names in Australian television. I want to thank you for downloading or subscribing to this podcast however you've found me. I love hearing your feedback, so make sure you leave a review or a comment on your chosen podcast platform.
On today's podcast, I have Michael Lucas, a multi award winning content creator, screenwriter and producer. He made his debut with the indie feature comedy Not Suitable for Children back in twenty twelve, and audiences would know a lot of his TV credits over the years. With Offspring Wentworth, Party Tricks, Five Bedrooms, and last year's critically acclaimed The Newsreader, which has its second series launching this week on the ABC.
This is Michael's second time of the podcast and while this is a longer chat than most of my usuals, I honestly felt like I spoke to him for twenty minutes, not close to an hour. The first season of The Newsreader won an Actor for Best Drama Series, with two episodes written and co written by Michael nominated for Actors for Best Screenplay and Television clear to say that this second series has been eagerly anticipated and we are going to get a lot of really fun insights into the
production of this new series. I will talk about The news Reader's popularity and how Michael has translated his love of the newsroom into a TV series which features real life events amongst the fictitious characters deliciously set in the eighties. Michael will share his ambition to bring back all the central characters to the Australian series, which would have been a huge challenge with Sam Reid and Anatov both being picked up for juicy roles. In Interview with The Vampire
for Sam and the last of us for Anna. Along the way, we will unpack the show's ability to address homophobia, racism, and feminism in the eighties and how that now looks in twenty twenty three. Plus, we will get plenty of exclusives from behind the scenes of The news Reader, which, as I mentioned, returns this Sunday night on the ABC, and you will be able to catch up on on ABC I view shortly after. Anyway, let's bring Michael into
the podcast. And I loved this chat and I really hope you enjoy this very interesting episode of TV reload. How are you? Anyway you will?
I'm good. I'm actually I'm jet lagged. I've just come back from overseas, but other than that, I'm good.
Well, I have to ask you straight off the bat, how excited were you when you got asked all it was confirmed that you were getting a second series of The news Reader?
Oh, hugely, massively, But this was actually one of those rare times where they got us developing the second season before the first season aired, so I was deep into it. There was part of me that was just relieved because I'd already done all this work. I already had like two episode scripts and everything, so I would have been really disappointed if we didn't get the second season by that stage.
You know that happens to p Oh, it's.
Happened to me. It's happened to me. Absolutely. I've been on shows where we've developed scripts for a future season and that I haven't gone with that, and so you just sort of have to have these sad little scripts sitting there that never get made, and you sit there thinking should we just give them to the cast so they can read it? Or is that be torture?
But there would be torture, but you know who would really appreciate it, the fans. Can you tell me was one of those series Party Tricks?
Yeah? No, totally, yes it was. That's the main one that I'm thinking of for sure. Yeah.
I have watched Party Tricks more times that first series than any other of your shows. And wow, I just am obsessed.
Oh great, Oh that's so lovely you. I love it when people love Party Tricks just because you know it was It's never the one that people normally mention. It's always Offspring or Wentworth or Newsreader or five hundreds. But it has a special place in my heart. But there are three scripts sitting there for season two that never happened.
You know, I often talk about this because a podcast about television, so you get it right. I often say to people when they're making their first series, whether they're writers, directors, cast, I say that, you know, all of the things can be perfect in a series and it may not go again. And when I think of one of the series, it's the most perfect in my mind that didn't go again and should help is that one.
So ah. It was always a bit ambitious to think, let's do a political show on Channel ten, and I think it was. It's always weird factors. It also came straight after Offspring, and I remember people just wanted more Offspring at that point. And I still remember Mum and me I had a whole article saying, we don't want this political show, we just want Nina and I yeah, so I think we were swimming against the tipe. But
I still love that. And it weirdly was picked up on by Acorn overseas in the middle of COVID and it had a little burst of life there, so you know it's still around.
It gets a burst of life in my house.
All that's so good.
Even some of the ways in which you were using your writing and the storytelling of that show to tackle some of the topics. Still is very relevant today, so like there's still really fun to unpack.
Oh and it got weirdly it kind of seemed to have all this strange resonance with the Trump Clinton election because it was well before that. But I remember it was about a TV star that gets parachuted into politics, going against a blonde establishment politician and beating her. Not that I mean Roger course is a very different proposition to Donald Trump, but worse than the funny parallels.
Well, I just had him on the podcast. Maybe he's still listening, and.
I heard I heard about the Traders.
Yes, I was going to ask you. The thing about writing a show and hoping it goes again is securing the cast, securing it, making sure they come back. Had you worried that Sam might have run off with some vampires and not have been available.
Well, yeah, when we cast this, it was in the middle of COVID, in the first burst of it when we cast the first season, and so you know a lot of these people like Sam and like Anna, the only reason they were in Australia at all was because of COVID and it certainly wasn't Like, I don't think it's revealing too much to say, we didn't really have options on anyone, so we just had to hope that they loved the show and had a really great experience
with it and would commit to coming back. And yeah, look it was I mean not just Sam, but Anna obviously got Last of Us, and Sam got Interview with the Vampire, which is massive, and Chia Hansen got Night Sky with Sissy SpaceX. It was like all our cast seemed to be getting this huge international shows. But yeah, thankfully they all jumped on straight away to come back.
So you know, we were really delighted and again relieved because I would certainly had plotted for the entire En Song Well to come back before we had secured them.
So would just have said that Sam ran off with you know, one of one of the makeup artists or something and rest him. Like, had you thought of a contingency play?
I guess I sort of had. I mean I didn't want to do it though, because I was so invested in Dale, but I had thought that maybe you could do something tracking Anna's character, sort of becoming a foreign correspondent or something. She could be overseas. You know, I had that in the back of my mind. And funnily enough, Lisa Miller on News Breakfast has written an amazing book about being a foreign correspondent, and I was reading that as sort of inspiration if it happened, And now she's
hosting a podcast about the Newsreader. So when I spoke to her for the first time, I said, you wouldn't read about it, but I've devoured your book. And if we didn't get Sam read, I had a whole version of the Newsreader that was Helen working internationally. But I'm sure that would have been an amazing and possibly expensive show. But I just wanted to continue the story with the characters that we had very much, and so yeah, it was wonderful that they all agreed to come back.
Well, we're watching previewing the second series, and by the way, congratulations it is. It's even better than the first season, which I thought was impossible.
Like, how many episodes have they given you?
I'm up to episode five?
Oh my god. Okay, you're deep and I have your privileged your privileged because because I do know that ABC has kept a pretty like you must be very persuasive.
Because I sleep I'm sleeping with the head of ABC. I'm I'm joking.
I'm joking.
Buttress always been on my bucket list, you know. No, yeah, I was going to say, so, we're up episode five and we're watching it, and my partner, he watches a lot of the shows that I'm previewing, and he said, about up to episode five, figures, do you know who Dale reminds me of? Dal kind of reminds me of like he could be a vampire. And I looked at him and I go, are you drunk? I was like, he's from Interview with the Vampire, the series we watched last year that you said was like one of the
favorite shows you've ever seen. And he was like, yes, oh, he's just dropped.
That makes sense to me. That makes sense to me because Sam is just so different. I mean, even though obviously you know it's still Sam. He looks the same, but you know, Dale and Lustat are just profoundly different characters and it's really amazing. I'm thrilled for him that he bounces between the two of them, because if you want to see an acting showcase, you just need to see him in one show. And yeah, he's almost unrecognizable in every way. His voice, the way he moves, the
way holds himself. It's really shows what an incredible actor is.
Yeah. I was gonna then ask you about what you think, well, what you thought of the interview with Vampire. But I feel like we got that there anyway.
I know I was obsessed. Well, I loved that book when that whole series was when I was a kid. I mean I got into it first through the movie, the Tom Cruise movie, of course, and then hit the books. But yeah, I mean, Sam, you know, I think we were imposed on newsreader when he got that role, and I was beside myself. I was like emailing him and texting him, and needless to say, when he arrived back in the country after doing interview the Vampire, I just sat down and just grilled him.
Did you ask him over for dinner? I'd be I'd step over the bounds of what's like a working relationship and be like, we need to go for a whine. You need to tell me everything that happened.
No, no, yeah, no, I absolutely we went out for a wine. I mean, the good thing was he was very gracious about it, and also, you know, I guess it was fun for him to chat about it with someone who knows it so well. Yeah. Well, now, of course Emma Freeman, who directs Newsy that has directed some of the interview with the Vampire as well, and I have yet to see her since she has got back,
but she knows I've already warned her. We're sitting down, You're telling me all the stories about it because I'm obsessed with I think they did such an amazing job with that shit, with the show.
It was real believable. Now that you know what worked in series won, did that kind of shape how you would attack the second series?
Yeah, although keep in mind that I started writing a second series before series one came out, which was interesting, so I didn't know how people were going to react to it, which is actually a really brilliant way to start because you just sort of talk about about it amongst the team and you just know what you thought
the strengths of it were. But I think one of the weird things about that was that we introduced a lot of new characters in the second series, Like in the first episode, you suddenly hit with multiple new characters, and part of me wonders if I'd waited until it came out because people seem to like the ensemble as it was so much. I'm not sure that I would have been so gung ho introducing all these new characters. I mean, all of your existing ensemble is in there.
But that was one thing that we went on with, and I'm really glad we did, because I mean, I think the story works really well with all the new characters.
But well, you've set up these people to you know've got to go and jump new hurdles. And I think sometimes with writing, and you go back and look at some of the bigger iconic shows, you know they worry too much about standing outside the call four or the core five. You know, it's just storytelling, and well fact it just leads to so much more possibility once you've got other characters for them to bounce off, because they draw different things out of these people. We feel like we know.
Yeah, absolutely, And probably if I'd waited to start developing it till after season one had aired, I think I would have been in that position of thinking, maybe let's just stick with the core and let's not bring in let's not shake it up too much. But other than that,
I just knew. I knew things like from the production of it, you know, big breaking news moments worked really well, and Emma Freeman had come up with this brilliant way of directing it where she sort of stages at like a big stage play, and so that influenced me, Like, we start with an election episode, and she ran all those scenes together and the cast learned everything so that they could get that kinetic pace happening with election night.
So yeah, I knew all of that, and I knew it's sort of a show that's about change, So we just wanted to keep pushing the characters forward into new territory and not spin our wheels too much.
Were the things that didn't fit into Series one that you were able to flesh out in series two. Is there anything that you had originally in the script that you were like, oh, well, let's move this into the next pant.
Well, actually, when we first developed Series one in the early days, it was eight episodes and then became six, so there was a bit of leftover material. Prominently, I mean, Charles and Diana pop up in series two, and originally that was part of the architecture of series one.
So iconic to the eighties, you know.
Oh absolutely, I mean, in the end, it was a bit weird that you didn't. I mean, Diana was just such a fixation in the eighties and she never even she was mentioned in series one, but you never saw her. I guess yes, I did sort of have a sense of kind of the developments in their personal life that in early stages I thought we might get to in series one, but we were chock full, and so they were definitely things that I wanted to explore. In series two.
It felt like we got to be very close to Dale's sexuality and where that was going to go with a relationship. And you know, had there been episodes seven and eight in season one, you might have found a few more conclusions there were, I think stopping it where it was, and then coming into series two it feels like there's some more airport into that, so you can digest it in a different way, which I think is a huge luxury to have when you're a writer creator
of something like this. I noticed when series one went to air a lot of people interpreted the last moments between them. He has a speech to Helen where he says, I have these feelings that won't go away, and neither were my feelings for you and it's tearing me apart. And I think people saw it as he's coming out and that's.
The end of Dale and Helen. I think people percent that maybe because they just sort of, you know, there's a habit to think gay and not consider that it's clearly a speech that's sort of leaning more towards buy. But in our mind we imagined that absolutely they would be staying together, and now that they're honest with each other, they're also like a safe harbor for each other, and
they'd be cleaning on tied. And I also felt like for the time being, it would take a while before their relationship gets tested because both of them were so ambitious and so work focused that they would just love working together and bouncing off each other. And so, you know, the idea that I had was maybe in about a year or so, something might happen or someone might come into their world that all of a sudden brings up the questions of what are we doing here, and what
should we be with each other? And what you know, we know the public just sees as as this romantic couple and what is to get married? Should we get married, what should we should it be open, should it be all of those sort of things. I just really wanted to take my time with those questions.
I felt that I thought that you might have been like, well, we can put a pin in that because necessarily, and this is what's really funny is we don't have a lot of storytelling about bisexual people, and so like, even addressing the fact that Dale might be bisexual still hasn't really been done properly in scripto drama that I've seen.
Yeah, totally, But I mean again, also it's interesting as well because I don't think even that bisexual is not
a word that Dale has access to. I think that at the time that he's in I think what's terrifying to him about his queerness is that he sort of feels like, if something happens with a man, then I can't go there because then it means I could never be with a woman like you know, from a Obviously, now we've hit a point where in you know, in certain parts of modern society you can be fluid about that sort of thing. But that was not the case in the mid eighties and not the case for Dale,
and he would never call himself bisexual. I don't think, I mean he would never call himself queer. He just doesn't even have a label for himself. He doesn't know who he is.
Well, the starter's queer was negative, you know.
Yeah, Well I always find it interesting with the show that I noticed this. You know, obviously, I'm sort of somewhat aware of fans that have taken to the show and the chatter around that, and I do notice that there has sort of ended up being these sort of people different camps, and that some people think, oh, Dale and Helen, they shouldn't be together. He should be, he should be often gay clubs and sleeping with men, and other people think, no, no, they' soulmates. They've got to
stay together. And there's all of these and other people think they should stay together, but just in this polyamorous, sort of reloving way. And I kind of love that this one relationship has draws all these different reactions.
But I think that's the beauty of what it is that you know, you're doing with this particular show. You're tackling race, sexuality, discrimination, feminism. There's so much that's going on. The whole show is laced with issues that I think is still being addressed in twenty twenty three, does that make you realize how far we've come or does it highlight how much we still need to do.
It's kind of both in a weird way. I mean, definitely, you know, sexuality, that's a huge change since the mid eighties. I mean just looking at someone in Dale's position now, it is a really big change, There's no doubt about it.
But you know, we also get into some First Nations issues in season two because we're dealing with the Bisentennial, and it was actually really startling just seeing how little change there really has, and of course we're at this point in history now where it's on the front page
of all the newspapers again. I think it was fascinating going back in time and reading about the Bisentennial protests, and of course at the time that was one of the biggest protests Austraia's ever seen, and it was kind of electrifying, and there was this real sense amongst First Nations activists that this was a big moment in time and that you know, a page was turning and I'm not really sure that the page has turned that much.
I mean, there was an apology and maybe there's been progress in some ways, but it was kind of shocking to see to go back and see how many of the same issues we're still grappling with today, and you know, in some ways relatively little progress. Some things that feels
like there's been drastic progress, other things not. Other things in between, like certainly feminism and the role of women in the media and stuff like there had there's definitely been progress, but also sometimes you can definitely see that we haven't come quite as far as we like.
I think, you know, mining for stories in how past in our history to me is always really fascinating for the comparison, you know, and I think that's what I mean, that's what this show does to me. I mean, apart from being very well acted and written and produced in all of that, it actually is saying something about Australian culture in a way that's really digestible and you know, entertaining, but also educational, I hope.
So, I mean, we're really genuinely trying to reflect what our research tells, where it's not a sort of a hopefully it doesn't feel like a didactic show.
No, it doesn't at all.
It is interesting to go back and look at where we were and to look at it from multiple viewpoints, and you know, the characters and the show, you've got a real range of people that have different positions on different every different issue. And yeah, I love I love actually going back and reading the letters section of the newspaper and just seeing what the debates were back then, and we use the show to kind of bring that to life.
What do you remember about the eighties, because we're about I think I said that before, we're around the same age. What with some of the historical events that you in your I guess you'd be the first ten years of your life. What does what stays in your mind that you still remember?
Oh, well, it definitely. It's interesting actually because the further we go with the news reader, the clearer the memories get. Like it's amazing how much more I can remember of eighty seven and an eighty eight than I could remember ninety of eighty six and look for Bisontinna, I just really very clearly remember that. I can I remember the full TV coverage, I remember the concert with Kylie Minogan. I live in Newton John, I remember all the projects
we had to do. I don't remember the protests, which is really telling.
No, I don't either. That's that's really funny that you say that. But I mean that's kind of addressed in the show where you look at the way in which you know, not no spoiler, but they do talk about it how it's being addressed in mainstream media. One of the characters says, this isn't in the paper, you know, And I thought that was really telling because I had to go through my own back catalog of memories and I don't remember and I remember the first fleet, certainly
remember that coin that we got at school. I certainly remember the Expo eighty eight song that you.
Know, oh that's in this celebration of a nation. Yes, yes, I mean we do a version of that, which is sorry, it's not that song, but we definitely are evoking that jingle.
That seems to fit perfectly well that am Roscian is singing that song.
Well. Funnily enough, when we were talking about the kinds of the sound we wanted, the composer that I was working with said we wanted a voice like Kate Sobranos, but we didn't actually want to get Kate Sobrano because she was around in the eighties and it would just be weird to see real life Kate Sobrano there hopefully you know, she might not want to do it and probaly couldn't afford her anyway. But I was like, I know someone who has that bluesy tone that you're looking for,
and so yes, that's how she got into it. But yeah, that I mean the Bison tee And also for me because you're Melbourne as well, aren't you you're Yeah, the Hottle Street massacre as well was incredibly amorable for me. I even just the name Hoddle Street was just loaded with such an ominous sense after that. I mean, I just remember talking about it in primary school and it was so shocking and kind of unfathomable, and you know, they're just the thought that you'd be driving in your
car and shots would start lasting through. So that has always been something. I lived near Hoddle Street and even now as an adult, I'm always so conscious of it. And the word is the names loaded with so much. So yeah, that was another really interesting one for all of us to go back and look at.
Which is amazing for you to be able to write stories of characters around that time. That's where I was asking that question. I was thinking, you know, to remember these moments and then to put words into the mouth of these characters about how the processed that I don't know, there's something very fascinating about diae that for you.
Oh yeah, totally. And also that one was particularly fascinating. Kim Hoe wrote that episode is another research absolute mega nerd like me. And the news coverage of that was really interesting because it was shockingly explicit, baffling to us. You would think that TV would be more violent now than it was then, but it was really startling how much of the aftermath they put on the news, and it was just a different culture and we sort of
found out that back then. It was not long after the Vietnam War, and there were so many points in the Vietnam War where there was really explicit photos and footage that were taken and the journalists that got that out were celebrated as heroes because they were showing the truth and the reality of war and it changed the way the public thought of war. So there was still that mindset in journalism that even in a mass shooting, will just get that footage to air and with no warnings.
And it was really like I had to warn everyone on the crew. We had the raw camera footage of the from the ABC archives and that's one thing that we've really news does not take that approach anymore, thankfully, and it was fascinat and to go back and just try and get in the mindset of why were they treating it like this?
Yeah, I think the grit in all of that and the reality of real life situations stops this particular series from being too soapy, do you know what I mean?
Like, yeah, well, I mean it still is a pretty melodramatic show.
Really, it's still a bit soap dish, don't worry, yeah, yeah, oh yeah.
But also because you know, the director is so skilled and the cast are so amazing, so they can absolutely take that big dramatic moments and make it feel gritty and truthful even when you know, even when it's a it's a twist worthy, if worthy of so proper.
I mean apart from m being there, which I thought was great, so we talked about that, but I also thought he's got a few of his friends. Jane Harber's in there, and her role is so funny, Like I think if Jane is very laugh out loud as a person in general, and it's not really the characters that she always plays. She does some very serious roles, but she's so so funny. Was it rewarding to watch her lift that dialogue onto the screen because it just adam well.
Some of it. There was one there's one memorable line that I'm sure you're thinking of that was a bit of banter that she worked up together with Anna that was not in the script, and it was very Jane Harbor. Yeah, that was the life. So Jane, you know, was played Nursara on Offspring and has become a really good friend
of mine. And it took us a while. So in the in the show, she plays the wife of a variety show host who's played by this wonderful Irish actor Rory Fleckburne, who you know, it took a while to cast that character, and we knew he had this striking role as and that he would have this wife who was vivid in her own right. She really needed to have presence. And as soon as I was speaking to Rory, I just felt like he and Jane are going to get on like a house on fire. And they did. Yeah,
they arrived. And also because Rory's musical and Jane is musical, she very rarely shows it on screen. She doesn't, you know, but I know that she's a great singer and pianist. And then as soon as they met, oh, it was like two musical theater kids that were out of their minds. And instantly they were planning to put in extra musical numbers in the show, which we scrambled to license music so we could get them having sing alongs. And I
love them. I would happily watch a spin off show about those two characters absolutely.
I mean, even that story itself about their relationship and their understanding. I don't want to walk into a spoiler, so I'm just going to try and dodge it. But yeah, it's just another taste of some amazing characters said in the eighties that are educating us in twenty twenty three.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Well, I mean the idea behind his character was we wanted to bring in someone who was a big contrast to Dale, but who sort of represented represented a path Dale could go down both professionally and personally.
You know, the story threaded through both of the seasons is Dale's homosexuality, and we do have a lot of LGBTI journalists who would have been closeted during that era, because you know, both of us are very nerdy and would know that from researching that time. You know a few things. Why do you think that we have a lot of queer people in the media. Do you think that there's any correlation in that?
It's interesting. I mean, it feels like there's got to be some sort of correlation between queerness and creative creativity in some ways, because it feels like queer people are
so overrepresented in creative fields and in media. I guess it's also to be honest, like the media and that level of media is difficult for people who have conventional family situations as well, like it's a really demanding schedule and you know, and often queer people aren't in those kind of conventional I mean, obviously, you know, there's all the whole broad spectrum, but just generality that might be part of the reason why. But I don't know, I mean,
there's so much about quinness. Why is it that so many queen men love the pop divers I mean, I really, I don't know. I'm one of them, and I and but yeah, I know, I know exactly what you mean. There's an overrepresentation.
I'm always thinking of But you know, I'm always thinking about it, and I'm I'm it sounds like I'm about to try and give you an explanation, and I'm not. I'm just adding some more you know, fodder theories, some more theories to it. I think that gay men relate to women because for our generation particularly, we grew up with women as the underdog and they became like our
superheroes for gay men. You know, they could tread the boards in places that we certainly didn't feel like we could, and they got to do it with big hair, makeup and great dresses, you know, totally, and I felt like that's their armor. So I felt like that's there. But it's again, it's like, you know, there's so many different theories about validation and redemption and the ability to do a good job of telling a story and captivating audio. I think so much of you growing up as a
queer person is feeling silenced. So maybe there's a power, you know, within that's had to be that's been yearned for and worked hard at, and you know, maybe there's something there in the storytelling of you know, a lot of our journalists who were very closeted during that time.
Yeah, totally. And I mean it's interesting some people that worked in newsrooms, queer people that worked in newsrooms have ended up working on the show, And often I didn't even realize that they were queer until away into the process, which is interesting. So it does sort of feel like this production has drawn those sort of people understandably to it, which is really great because you know, I wander around saying to them, Okay, was the gay club you went
to after work in the eighties? Give me names, give me specific names, And of course they all disagreed about which was the one that the cast would go to.
Yeah, I was curious to ask you about you know, what does Dale's character look like in twenty twenty three? Are we still facing people presenting the news with you know, masculine archetypes. I mean, are we now seeing a difference?
Yeah? I think I genuinely think we are. I think Dale in twenty twenty three. I mean, you know, look at Jeremy Fernandez and you know, I mean there's a number of out we're presenters looking at Real to Jacobs, and I feel like Dale would be having a wonderful
time in twenty twenty three. And it's quite. It's tragic that he's stuck in nineteen eighty seven and he's been through a lot of trauma, and he's very ambitious, and yeah, I genuinely feel in my mind the Dale of twenty twenty three would be in a much much better place. I think so.
But then I also wonder whether or not a gay man in his position in this day and age, because he idolizes Helen Norvil, you know, his obsession with her. It's unknown really as to whether not it's even sexual really, And maybe he's using a for promotion, you know what I mean, Like is in maybe he knows that he's going to get more work if he makes this thing work.
Well, I think it can sort of be everything all at once. I mean that's how I look at it. Like. And I know people can look at Dale and Helen and go, oh, is it just are they just using each other? Is it a marriage of convenience or whatever? I sort of feel like, well, I mean, they really do love each other. I think on one level, I think it's probably fair to say that the driving force
and their relationship is not necessarily the physical passion. But also I don't think it's without that, So it's a complicated thing, and then yeah, you can't extricate it from the fact it's also very professionally beneficial for them to be together. But I find, you know, in life, that all these motivations can come together at the same time, and I don't know that any one of them rules out any of any of the other ones. So yeah, but I hope that people watch it and keep guessing.
Michael, you're supposed to know the answer to these questions. You're supposed to feel like you know that.
Well, you know that. For me, it's like they're so they're so sort of real and multifaceted that it's like talking about you know, your very close family members, order you know them so well that yes, there's a really ambitious part of them, but there's also this tenderness and you know, and then there's a yearning for outside passion, but then there is also passion between them, so you know, I almost find it hard to sum them up.
I have so much admiration for you in the sense of not necessarily knowing the answers to these things, still your own questions about these characters. I think that is quite amazing.
Oh well, yeah, but also part of it. I mean, I genuinely feel like, you know, in terms of my own queenness and everything, I just didn't know who I was for the longest time. And I feel like Dale, you know, doesn't know who he is really. And also you could say I'm not conflating these two things. But Helen with her mental health, well, she clearly struggles with her mental health, but she doesn't have a label for it.
She doesn't know what it is. She's sitting in this space where she can tell that there's a problem, but she doesn't certainly doesn't know how to treat it, and everything that's been done so far doesn't work. So I do think that the news reader with this particular show, there is this unknown all these mysteries about the characters, but their mysteries to the characters themselves. They don't know the answers to them, and they're living at a time
where they can't get those answers. But I feel like it's probably more specific to this show. I mean other shows that I've worked on. You know, if you are asking me about like The Offspring Cast, I'll probably give you very direct answers about what I thought. But with Dale and Helen, they're really complicated, and not that the
Offspring Casts weren't. Of course, they're really complicated, but there's a Yeah, they're stuck in a space of not quite knowing who they are, and that's what's interesting about them. I think often don't tell you what to think about a moment as much you you know, which is why I think people can have different perspectives on the characters.
And why we're talking about it, you know, which I think is amazing. Like if I'm talking about it with you, a creator of this, and you're like, well, maybe it's this, you know, I think that's really fascinating.
And I think I think I would say the same and Emma, like all of us that work on it and the other writers, you know, we would Yeah for us, they're just like, there's really multifaceted or broken, confused people that Yeah, they're not easy to sum.
Up, do you think that, you know? I mean, Helen really has to fight tooth and nail in what she believes in. And there is a lot of Helen storming through the newsroom, you know, which is so funny because my partner and I have been walking around our apartment doing the Helen novel yeah, but there's a lot of that in season two. But do you reckon that kind of fighting is still happening in newsrooms the way that it did in the eighties.
Well, I mean, I'm sure people are still very passionately advocating for things, and I'm sure things get heated. I would like to think that we're not still in that stage of the crazy yelling and that people aren't like
bosses like William mcinness's character anymore. I do, you know, And that's just general more ahiness, more of an awareness of that, and that seems to be reflected by you know, because I've spoken to a lot of journalists that have been in the media, you know, from the eighties or nineties until now, and they do talk about that change.
I still think there's tensions, and there's deadlines, and there's people losing patients, but there is no by and large, there's a lot less of the screaming and door slamming and all that sort of stuff. But it really was a feature of newsrooms back then. Everyone said the same
thing that that's how it rolled. And I certainly know that commercial radio can be a hotbed for that sort of stuff, and maybe it stayed that way in commercial radio even longer than it did in TV newsroom, So that's my sense of it.
Anyway, we have to talk about Mark Downey because she is so iconic in his role. It's just such a shock to men season one about how amazing she really is. She's such a brilliant actress. She's a very good comedian,
which we've always known. I wanted to know what feedback did you get from her being in the season one and because she would have had a lot of time as a real person with people coming up to her and talking to her about how much of a bitch that lady saw they see unt but I by shopping center, she might come up to me and be very protective of this character. What kind of feedback did she give you between seasons?
Oh, she's so gorgeous, And basically the feedback was just how much she enjoyed the experience, how much she loved the reaction. She definitely said that she was flooded with responses and that she very much enjoyed just so many people reaching out to her, you know, texting and everything
like that. She loved it, and you know, she's just very much wanted to continue with more of the same there was She absolutely understood that her character often can be let's just say, passive, aggressive or worse or manipulative.
I know this person. I know you like I feel like we all know this person.
They're out there for sure. But she loved it, and I still remember. I remember season one she came in to do her sort of adr, her dialogue replacement. It was the first time she got to see some scenes and I played her some of the scenes, some of the moments that I loved, and I remember she got this big smile on her face and went, oh, she's such a bitch, but with absolute delight, and so.
You know, it makes me so happy.
Yeah, and she's just It was wonderful coming back, just knowing how Marg approached the role. And she has a few scenes with Maria Angelico plays a very innocent makeup artist Cheryl, and Marg's character very shrewdly manipulates her and I, you know, we just love developing that sort of stuff. It reminded us of the movie of the book Rebecca with Missus Danvers and the notion of an innocent coming into Marks. We also get a big showdown between Anna and Mark that was also, I mean, yeah, I love
the character too. She's another character that I would be just happy to watch the Evelyn Show.
So would, and I hate that woman in real life. Whenever that woman in real life comes across my table, I'm like, I've seen you. They're the master of manipulation, the master of conversation and the importance of saying less but articulating the most.
Yeah, while she evolves a little bit, I won't say anymore, but you'll have to just see where she winds up at the end.
Well, A great way to tease this season is something from your perspective. Is there a favorite moment that you are looking forward to audiences seeing, you know, not of course not giving it away, but you know, just allowing people to do this podcast to have that moment watching this series where they go, this is what they were talking about.
Hunter page Lechard plays this role in it, and I think he's so magnetic and great and I'm just really excited for people to see him because I think I still think of Hunter Pasler. I'm playing teenagers, and the character he's playing now is very much not a teenager, and he looks like Prince.
He moves like Prince. You know there's asexual dance moves that he manages to do that.
Is very well. He's hunter, comes from a dancing family, and that was his one note. Actually, we had a we had a scene where he's playing some Marsha heins and he says, can I get up and have a little bit of a boogie? And I said, uk, whoever?
It even says Marshall heines in the final product. I think he just keeps saying Marsha, and we don't know until we hear Marsha. I'm not sure. I'm probably gonna get standing. We're going to be corrected. It feels really obvious to ask this question to you, but do you know if we're going to get a season three? Are you what's going on with this? I know?
I wish I could say, no, you can't tell me. Well that's a case. No, no, no, no, I'm saying I don't know, I don't know.
My contracts up for negotiation, give me my money.
No, no, no, I personally would love there to be a season three, but no, I don't. I don't know yet, and we'll have to wait and see how season two is received.
Is it harder to get multiple series made? And how do you go about securing the next season? Do you just sit back and hope for the best, or are you, you know, sending them pages? Are you like, what do you do in this position to make sure that we get you get more to tell more story?
Oh well, yeah, you absolutely develop your plan for what you would do and hope, you know, just to show people, look, we've got great ideas. Here are great ideas to go forward. I mean, it does get harder with every season because I think especially in the streaming world, you know, it's the new is often the most valuable, like what's going
to grab subscribers new subscribers. So that's why you don't get those long running shows the way that you used to, with a few exceptions like yeah, it's always about new short run limited series or whatever. But you know, the show sold really, really well, and the cast of now bigger draws for audiences than they were when we started.
And I know, I mean, I'm you know, if we were to keep going, we get into nineteen eighty nine, which that is an absolute blockbuster year, like that's got the Berlin Wall and it's got Tianneman Square and just these absolutely epic news stories. So yeah. I mean, I'm very happy to be on the record saying I want it. I really want it to happen. I think we could do a great season, but you know it's in the hands of the gods of what's in the hands of the audience.
Really, before you go, I was gonna say, do you think because we had like this season of rebooted shows for a period of time, you know, streamers were launching with a reboot of a popular brand, how would you feel if in ten years time they rebooted one of your shows? Could you see that happening? And I wanted to know how that would make you feel if someone else was doing that with your So I've never thought about it.
Actually, my gut reaction is I'd be delighted because I feel like it would just be well, I mean, you know, you want to try and write characters that lodge in people's hearts and minds, and if they have to the extent that people want to reboot the show, then you know, that's great. Also, I think i'd probably get some some sort of residual sport, so that'd be good.
So you think about Michael, that's not enough and with the money.
It's interesting because I myself don't and would you know, once I'm done with the show, I think I'm pretty done. Like I remember Offspring finished with season five and I was done, and that that was one of the times where and you wouldn't even call it was a reboot because it was just two years later they picked it up again. But I was, like I was, I had moved on, and so I can't. I don't think I would ever personally want to take something from the past
and reimagine it. I'd rather do something new. But if someone else wanted to do it, yeah, sure, I'd be thrilled to see what they came up with.
Yeah, it's your gift. It'll be your gift to them anyway. The last question I have to ask you before you go, what is something from behind the scenes of making the second series something weir as an audience won't see that kind of like a behind the scenes secret from your perspective of making coming back and doing this again.
Oh I suppose. I suppose in some ways, the most interesting thing that you won't see is that you know, we are very lucky that we've got the entire ensemble back, which was no small feet, considering so many of them were so employed. But definitely one of the tricky situations we were in was with Chai Hansen, who plays Tim, got this amazing role on Night Sky with Sissy Space,
like a huge Amazon show, which was so brilliant. Unfortunately for us, it meant that he was committed to this Amazon show and there was really no guarantee that we could get him. And I love that character and I just felt like he has to make a return appearance in the second series. It just has to happen. And I know that Chai loved the show, but of course, you know, big Amazon International show. And also the thing was at the end of the first season he had
left the newsroom. So in actual fact, like we didn't, it wouldn't We wouldn't have needed to explain it if he didn't appear again. I just emotionally did not want to let the character go, and basically we were sort of advised, look, he should maybe consider just moving on and not incorporating him, but I couldn't. So what I did was I sort of in my mind, I developed two different pathways for the show, one where we got Chai Handsom back and one where we didn't get him back.
And to make to make the stakes even higher. We were not going to get final confirmation on whether or not we could get him until we were already shooting, so I was sitting there poised. I wrote all the scripts with you know, with the episodes that have Chai in them, and I hoped, like hell, we were going to get him. And I knew that Chai was doing his best with his people, but we were just sitting
there holding our breast. But in my mind I had a whole other version and if that had happened, if we got the call saying we're really sorry you can't get hy, then I would have just had to like suddenly rewrite a lot of the series and stay up all not doing it. But as you can imagine, I was so relieved when Chai thankfully managed to make it work and managed to get to Melbourne for a few weeks to shoot his role in the second series. That
was a very happy day. And the audience will have no idea that there was this whole other alternate version where Tim remained absent, but I'm thrilled that he was back.
Mate. I just want to say thank you so much for your generosity with your time. I absolutely always love talking to you. There's something so electric about someone being so passionate about what it is that they do and doing it so well. So yeah, thank you, oh my pleasure.
Thanks